Cori Bush’s Opponent Is Swimming in Right-Wing AIPAC Cash
Wesley Bell, who’s challenging Cori Bush in Missouri, dropped out of a race against Republican Josh Hawley to take on the Democratic congresswoman. Apparently, punching left with AIPAC’s support is a more appealing career booster than challenging the Right.
Rep. Cori Bush on Capitol Hill on March 12, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
In 2006, Wesley Bell attended a $2,000-per-ticket event welcoming President George W. Bush to St Louis, Missouri. At the time, Bell was managing the campaign of Mark Byrne, a conservative Republican running for the MO-01 congressional seat on promises to oppose abortion and gun control. Byrne lost to Democrat Lacy Clay.
In 2014, Bell changed course and marched in the Ferguson protests after the police murder of Michael Brown. Most believe Bell’s political career began with this involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, and Bell is relying on this reputation in his current campaign against progressive Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush. But his history and his allegiances deserve far more scrutiny.
In 2018, riding the wave of Black Lives Matter, Bell ran for St Louis County Prosecutor as a progressive Democrat. He channeled the intense desire for a change in Missouri’s draconian criminal justice system and won, taking the political establishment by surprise. Bell’s predecessor, Bob McCulloch, had failed to indict Officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown over petty shoplifting. Bell promised he would bring charges against Wilson. But in August 2020, he changed his mind and decided not to.
“It was a betrayal,” said Justin Hansford, a St Louis activist and director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University, in an interview with the Intercept. “There were a lot of people who spent a lot of time and energy supporting Bell specifically because they expected him to at the very least reopen the case and let the family have their day in court, so that the facts could be put forth in a trial, and so that everyone could see them. It would have given us a sense of transparency.”
Still, Bell’s profile rose in the Missouri Democratic Party, and in early 2024, he announced a run for Senate against Josh Hawley, a self-declared Christian Nationalist. The Ferguson protests featured prominently in Bell’s early campaign material. “Ferguson made me realize there was more I could do,” Bell said. Bell argued that Hawley’s agitational behavior during the January 6 protests stoked the fires of unrest. “When I faced chaos in Ferguson, I worked to calm tensions,” Bell said. “But when Josh Hawley was faced with chaos, he chose to inflame it.” Hawley’s January 6 behavior was beginning to prove a major liability, with one wealthy and well-connected donor admitting that supporting Hawley’s rise “was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” making him feel something akin to “what Dr Frankenstein must have felt.”
But rather than build his campaign against Hawley, Bell dramatically shifted his priorities, pivoting to mount a challenge against a left-wing Missouri politician instead. Last June, Bell called Cori Bush to promise he wouldn’t run against her. Then, after the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 and the outbreak of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) “let it be publicly known that a challenger to Bush would have effectively bottomless fundraising support,” writes Ryan Grim. Bell subsequently dropped out of his race against Hawley and turned around to challenge Bush. This opened the floodgates for the Israel lobby, which has spent a staggering $7 million on Bell’s run to capture Bush’s seat.
As of July 2024, AIPAC’s massive donations only account for 62 percent of Bell’s contributions — in part because Missouri Republicans have lavished Bell’s coffers. The Huffington Post reported that Bell’s campaign filings included donations “from notable sources such as Steven Tilley, a GOP former Missouri House speaker who’s now a lobbyist,” and “Daniel Loeb, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Third Point, who has donated millions to Republican causes.”
World Wide Technology’s David Steward, a conservative tech billionaire from St Louis, also supports Bell. “Steward recently served as the finance chair of a super PAC that supported Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) run for president,” the Huffington Post reported. “All told, Bell raised more than $65,000 from donors who also gave to one of Missouri’s two Republican senators, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, in their most recent campaigns, or Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the leading Republican candidate for governor.”
Bell had gone from opposing Hawley to raking in donations from the same people supporting his former opponent. Rather than try to turn a red seat blue, Bell apparently felt his political career was better served by a well-funded challenge against a fellow Democrat in a safe blue seat.
Bush in the Crosshairs
Before 2014, Cori Bush was employed as a nurse. She ran on a platform advocating “black maternal health, abortion rights and diverting money from law enforcement to public services,” all issues integral to the lives of working-class black women like herself. Bush’s priorities also include passing the pro-union PRO Act, expanding Medicare until it’s Medicare for All, passing the Green New Deal, and raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour.
In 2023, Bush secured millions of dollars in emergency funding after catastrophic flooding ravaged St Louis. Her office is now focused on preparing St Louisans for the future, which promises more extreme weather that will compound the manifold environmental issues facing Missouri and hit working-class people hardest.
Environmental justice is a key issue for Bush, who is also attempting a major nuclear waste removal from schools and residential backyards. Contaminated by Mallinckrodt-refined uranium during the Manhattan Project, the price tag for the cleanup of Coldwater Creek is over $400 million, totaling $2.6 billion in environmental liabilities that only grow year after year as the contamination seeps and spreads around in flooding. Due to the cost, politicians have been disinclined to touch the cleanup project, and residents have paid a steep price. The zip codes that Cold Water travels through in north St Louis County have elevated levels of cancer. “Every man on my block died of stomach or intestinal cancer,” said Representative Doug Clemens of St Ann. Bush is pursuing legislation that will clean up the contamination.
Bush’s advocacy for increased public investment to improve conditions for working-class St Louisans has won her few friends in elite corridors. But it’s her position on Gaza that has made her the target of right-wing spending in this race. The congresswoman was one of the first to file legislation calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. She has also shown stalwart support for activists in her home district.
MO-01 is home to large assembly facilities for the Boeing Cooperation, with many military-industrial contractors scattered throughout. On April 15, pro-Palestine activists blocked the gates of the Boeing manufacturing plant in St Charles, Missouri. Boeing manufactures military weapons from drones to missiles to jets, many of which are used by the Israel Defense Forces in its assault on Gaza.
The following month, another round of protests occurred in St Louis, also related to Boeing. In May, Washington University students formed a Palestinian solidarity encampment. Protesters pointed to the university’s connections with Boeing and demanded disinvestment. In response, the university declared the encampment illegal and deployed police to aggressively arrest the protesters. “There were brutalizing assaults,” sophomore León-Díaz said. “It was jarring to see my friends being treated like empty sacks of organs, entirely dehumanized, with no respect for their dignity.” Over one hundred students, teachers, and activists were cuffed.
Bush aligned herself with the protesters, saying, “Solidarity with antiwar student activists at WashU.” Megan Green, president of the St Louis Board of Aldermen, told Jacobin:
Congresswoman Bush organized a call with all the students and impacted faculty in the days after the brutality to hear their stories and how Washington University’s heavy-handed response impacted them. She immediately contacted the university to attempt to open up a dialogue between the administration and students.
It is this activity that has opened up Bush’s race to a flood of donations from AIPAC and right-wing pro-Israel donors.
The Stakes of the Race
Drive through the district’s rich white neighborhoods like Webster and the Central West End, and you will see many Wesley Bell yard signs — some with pro-Israel signs as well. But in MO-01, the white enclaves are a minority. Bush’s strongest districts are in the predominantly black neighborhoods in North St Louis. She is most popular among those living paycheck to paycheck.
It’s unclear if Bell’s spending will sway those voters. In any case, there is no organic call for a tack to the center in MO-01. As Green told Jacobin, “We currently have alignment in our city politics between local and congressional representation. Bell winning threatens to disrupt that collaboration and uniform vision. Cori fights with us and having that type of leadership is essential to creating a St Louis that thrives.”
Bush’s seat is a valuable one for the Democratic Party because it’s so secure — a rare position inside a heavily gerrymandered red state where left values have a loud voice. The urban blue islands of Missouri are the state’s only counterbalance to uniform Republican rule.
In this environment, Bell is trying hard to shore up his progressive bona fides. But in one telling twist, a campaign ad depicting him speaking at a Ferguson rally in 2014 shows Bush, too, standing behind him in the crowd. This snapshot hints at the central difference between Bush and Bell. Do the core values of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was born in St Louis, stop at the perimeter of the United States? Bell believes those values do not apply to Gazans. Bush believes they do.
These are the higher-level, more theoretical stakes of the race. But while Israel plays a major role in determining the allocation of money, on the ground, the election is about resource allocation.
Bell’s message is that he is every bit as progressive as Bush, but is also — at the same time and without conflict — friendlier to corporations and big business. Older, richer people in St Louis believe they’ll get something out of Bell that Bush isn’t offering. If they turn out in larger numbers, Bell will win. But if younger, more progressive people of color turn out, Bush will win. The vote is on August 6.